“This is a United States Navy vessel, Captain Boyle,” Spencer said, his lips compressed as if holding back an order to bring out the cat-o’-nine-tails. “Manned by Navy and Coast Guard personnel. We have a nodding acquaintance with the sea. And I will get you out there and off the Bayfield as fast as possible.” He bellowed for Weber, who must have been gripping the door handle, he was in so fast. “Ensign Weber, take these men to Lieutenant Raffel.” Then, turning his eyes on me, he said, “Raffel can take you out on the PA 12–88. It’s already in the water, so you can leave as soon as possible.”
“Aye aye, Captain,” I said, and followed Weber. Sometimes I wise off too much, I know. But the senior brass-most of them-rub me the wrong way. When a mere captain has the authority of the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force behind him, it’s hard to resist letting the shit roll in the opposite direction once in a while.
“What about this lieutenant?” I asked Weber. “Does he know the local waters?”
“Sure, he has a little sailboat he picked up. Goes out when he has time and zips around the bay. He’s got a good ship and crew. What’s this all about, Captain Boyle?”
“Sorry, kid. Need to know.”
“Yeah, and I don’t need to know,” Weber said. “Same old story.” And here I thought it was our exclusive little joke. He led us down a gangplank running alongside the ship. Bobbing in the water, tied to the Bayfield, was a small craft, sort of a cross between a Higgins boat and a speedboat that had aspirations to grow up and be a PT boat one day. Winches were lowering other landing craft into the water from the decks where they were stored.
“What is that, exactly?” I asked, pointing to the boat riding up and down on the swells, dwarfed by the five-hundred-foot Bayfield.
“Landing Craft Support, Small,” Weber said as he led us onto the vessel. And the accent was on small. “It’s a rocket boat. See those launchers on either side? They can fire twenty-four rockets each.”
“That’s what we saw firing at Slapton Sands,” I said. “Pretty impressive. I didn’t realize the boats were so tiny.”
“They pack a lot of punch for their size,” Weber said proudly as the crew looked us over.
“Lieutenant Keith Raffel,” a guy in rumpled khakis said, holding out his hand. I introduced myself and Big Mike, and Weber gave him the word from Captain Spencer that he was to take us out into Lyme Bay. Raffel was tall and gangly, his face tanned from the days on his sailboat or the open bridge of this odd little craft. “We were just about to head out and shake down our new engine,” he said. “Glad to have you aboard.”
“You heard about the attack on the convoy last night?” I asked.
“Sure, everyone has. We were told mum’s the word.”
“Still is, but I want to see how the rescue operation is going out there,” I said.
“Recovery is more like it,” Raffel said. “But sure, we’ll take you out. Can I ask why?”
“We’re assisting the army investigation,” Big Mike said. “Orders from SHAEF.” Raffel shrugged, not all that interested in why the army was investigating a navy catastrophe. He probably knew he had no need to know.
“Okay, we’re almost ready to shove off,” Raffel said, turning to one of his crew. “Yogi, get these men some lifejackets, willya?”
“Sure, Skipper,” a young seaman said, coming up from belowdecks. “All we got are lifebelts. You guys know how these work?”
“Yogi?” I said, taking the lifebelt from him. He was stocky and dark, with a ready smile and sharp eyes. “What kind of name is that? You look Italian, maybe.”
“I am,” he said. “Gunner’s Mate Lawrence Berra, but they call me Yogi.”
“Why?” Big Mike asked, taking his lifebelt and trying to cinch it around his waist.
“No, no, that ain’t right,” Yogi said. “Not around the waist. You put it around your chest, right up under your armpits. Then if you gotta go in the water, you inflate it with these CO2 cartridges, here. See? If you wear this around your waist, you end up head over heels in the water, which don’t work so good as far as breathing goes.”
“Okay, got it,” I said as I tightened the belt as high as I could. Big Mike managed to get his on, extending it as far as it would stretch. “But what’s with the name?”
“I played some baseball with the Norfolk Tars in the Piedmont league right before I was drafted,” he said. “I used to sit on the field cross-legged, you know? Like those guys in India? So they started calling me Yogi. A guy from the league was in boot camp with me, so the name followed me into the navy.”
“Okay, Yogi,” I said. “You been on this rocket boat long?”
“Hang on,” Yogi said, as the skipper eased her away from the Bayfield and gave her some throttle. “Yeah, I volunteered back in basic. They asked if any guys wanted to get into the rocket boats, and I was readin’ a Buck Rogers comic book at the time. I guess I thought it was going to be something like that, you know? But here we are, on dry ground, except it’s water. I was kinda disappointed, but I don’t mind. The future just ain’t what it used to be, you know?”
“But …” Big Mike began, and then shook his head, thinking better of it.
“So how do these work, Yogi?” I asked, patting the rocket-launcher tubes as we cleared the harbor.
“Well, you don’t have to worry, they ain’t loaded,” Yogi said. “But when they are, we got twenty-four rockets on each side. All forty-eight go off at once when we get three hundred yards from the beach. They set off mines, blow barbed wire, and generally scare the hell out of the Krauts. Then we got twin fifty-caliber machine guns and two thirty-millimeter cannon, to hit machine-gun nests, or whatever. We go in before the infantry lands, right up front.”
“That’s why the boat is armored,” Big Mike said. The sloping front of the bridge was covered in steel plate, with thin vision slits.
“Yep,” Yogi said. “Gettin’ killed would make our job a lot harder.” There was no arguing with that.
The skipper picked up speed as we got out into the Channel. There wasn’t much room aboard with the crew of seven. The boat was maybe thirty feet long, and with the rocket launchers and all that armament, there wasn’t much space for sightseers. Big Mike and I hung on to the gunwale as we began to bounce over the chop in the grey waters, leaving the shore behind us. The crew manned their weapons, keeping eyes peeled for the Luftwaffe. The wind whipped us, salt spray feeling like sand against our faces.
After five minutes running at full throttle, Raffel eased up and checked with his Machinist’s Mate. The new engine was holding up fine. We proceeded at a slightly slower pace, but fast enough that we still had to hold on as we crested each wave and drove on to the next.
“Port bow,” one of the gunners yelled, and Raffel eased the boat into a turn. There were two Royal Navy corvettes about half a mile out, close in to each other. As we came nearer, I could make out nets in the water, as if they were after fish. But the nets weren’t filled with fish. There were bodies caught up in the netting, most with packs on their backs and many with rifles still slung over their shoulders. It was a gruesome tangle of the drowned and the devastated, some missing limbs, protruding bones stark white amidst the soaked khaki green.
“Keep going,” I said. Raffel turned the boat away, his engine muffled as if the sound might disturb the dead. “What I’m looking for is where the tides might bring the bodies. What do you think?”
“Tide’s coming in along the southwest coast,” Raffel said. “So this is about right. They would have drifted in from the site of the attack, which is about twelve miles out.”
“Okay, let’s head along the line the tide would take them,” I said. I turned, noticing Big Mike’s eyes still fixed on the men in the nets, even as our boat picked up speed and left them behind. I hoped we wouldn’t run into any more of that.
We spotted other small craft moving slowly, looking for bodies, some close to shore, maybe watching for corpses on the beach. Others were farther out, and I wondered whether there was a chance of finding a survivor in a raft or on a piece of wreckage. And whether the Germans might come looking too. An hour passed, maybe more. It was like a day out fishing, when you head to where the other boats are in hopes of a good catch, but they disperse before you get there. I was about to suggest we head back when Raffel pointed ahead of us, beckoning me to come up on the bridge.